WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Do you remember the story of JVC’s VHS versus Sony’s BETAMAX?

Yes, Sony’s format was better with more reproduction quality, but…

JVC’s  had more movies available and at the end of the day, content prevailed over technology.

Well, now you can understand why Brian Marshall says that “for Apple, content is the focus of the tablet.”

Look at the Google Phone, the Super Phone, the “iPhone Killer”…

The Nexus One could be better as a product (it’s not) but the iPhone has these 100.000 applications, so the game is over.

The same is going to happen with the new upcoming tablets.

The key for the success of the Apple one  will be not the hardware but the software.

And just channeling these 100.000 applications to the new tablet will be enough to win the war.

The Apple tablet will have, I am sure, brilliant hardware.

Superb design.

Great usability.

Magnificent navigation tools…

But, again, it’s the software, stupid!

It’s the wine, not the bottle.

Or as the British used to say when the first computers were presented as “the” solution to have better education in the scholols:

“Garbage IN, Garbage Out”

So, good news for media companies and other content-driven providers.

The Apple tablet loves your content.

Apple wants your content.

Apple needs your content.

Music content made the difference for the iTunes and iPod.

So Multimedia content will make the difference for the Apple iTablet.

Are you ready?

Well, if your newspaper still dosen’t have an iPhone application, I don’t believe you.

You are NOT ready.

And shame to you and to your IT people!

UPDATE:

INNOVATION’s Javier Zarracina writes from Boston, and he is absolutely right, that Visual Content will be a key-issue in the success of these tablet.

Done not just by decorators, but by Visual Journalists.

They must be also counting the days until they can play and work with this fantastic device.

Thanks, Javier!

Sony has presented the first prototypes of a new digital flexible display devices.

As you can watch in this video, the organic transistors technology provides the needed flexibility to fold, roll, and add applications with sensors and input devices.

Expensive?

Yes, these are breaking ground prototypes, but there is a huge market for these flexible digital displays.

And more flexible than these ones.

That’s the reason of my expression “rubber newspapers”

As INNOVATION has been preaching for more than 20 years, this is the future of almost any news digital display.

Like the first stone carved newspapers, we are still in the Digital Acta Diurna Era, displaying today’s news content in “digital stones” doesn’t matter if they are called flat computers, fancy smart phones or, pay attention to the word, digital “tablets”.

That’s good news for all of us, news content producers and consumers.

So, don’t worry about the future of print newspapers, and concentrate, invest and excel on unique multi-media story-telling.

The rest is history.